Bad Pun Enters Fourth Century
Nicky Mee reports that a rare worn-down pencil belonging to William Shakespeare has been unearthed. Experts are not sure if the pencil is 2b or not 2b.
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Maternity Ward Conundrum Exhibited
Maternity Nurse: “Will the father be present?” Woman in labor: “No, he and my husband don’t get along.”
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IDIOTS ON PARADE
Plaintiff busted trying to use AI prompt injection to win court case, hides text instruction in filing — demands AI model reviewing the text should side with him, rumbled because of strange white spaces in text. Thank you Tom’s Hardware
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What Is It Really?
AI is boring cloud software that is wildly unprofitable and not that useful for most people.”
—Ed Zitron
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GenAI Poses Problems
What are you going to do about it?

HOORAY FOR MAPQUEST!
Send Message To Google
It’s not much, but I have joined, and am ordering you to join, the millions of people who have downloaded the free Mapquest app as a way to poke Google in the eye for its ass-kissing decision to take a knee in front of the Cheeto and rename Lake Ontario. I’m even going to try using it! In the meantime, let’s show Google how much we admire its principled stance. Mapquest still shows Gulf of Mexico. You go Mapquest.
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Renaming Goes On
The president now refers to Canada geese as Donald Ducks.
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New Great Lakes Mnemonic Proposed
HOMES was the mnemonic for the great lakes: Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie and Superior. Should Lake Ontario be named Lake America, as has been proposed, the new acronym would be SHAME.
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DANGER WILL ROBINSON
Mt. Shasta climbers misled by AI rescued
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Keep Up With The Chronicles
There is still a lot to say about The Computer Chronicles, and who better to say it than the Wizard of All Things Chronicles, S.M. Oliva. Now you can subscribe to his newsletter. I was granted a preview; it’s well worth a subscription, entitling you to early access and a print copy, should you so desire.
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Oura Ring Data Challenged
Oura, the sleep ring, ran into rough water on the way to its $11 billion initial public offering. It claims to use heart rate, temperature and motion as proxies determine sleep quality. A European study says no, as does a customer lawsuit.
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You Don’t Need To Look Far Ahead
I keep seeing variations of this, attributed to various celebrities. ‘I can drive all the way to New York from California while only seeing 20 feet ahead of myself. I don’t have to be able to see New York when I start.” Stay in the moment? Don’t drive ahead of yourself? Only plan 20 feet ahead? You tell me.
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Good Cooking Defined
“My idea of cooking is dialing.”
–The late, great Gloria Steinem

A Bundle of Briefs

A tip of the PSACOT Hat to my long-time friend Joe Kashi; from now on, the AI subsection of This and That will be subtitled:


IDIOTS ON PARADE
Meat Proxy Turns Viral
Like most old guys, I am usually on the trailing edge of new terms. Not this time. A Meat Proxy is a person who forwards AI-generated text, code, or other output without reading, understanding, or validating it. The person acts only as a relay between the AI system and the intended recipient.
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Bill Gates Gets With The Program. On His Own Website: An epochal shift. The turbulent AI era is here. The choices we make now are critical. We need a plan to ensure that the good outweighs the bad. In the New York Times: Bill Gates Warns A.I. Is More Dangerous Than Big Tech Will Admit
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Scientists Found Evidence That Al Builds Internal Models of the World
There’s a fierce debate at the heart of Al: is a system trained only to predict the next word just a fancy autocomplete, shuffling surface patterns, or does it secretly build a model of reality inside itself?

=== end Idiots On Parade

Parton Tribute Planned
Let me add my weight to the idea that Sept. 25 should be Dolly Parton day. (9-two-five, get it?) Like May 4 (May the force be with you, Star Wars), and March 14  (π day). Shower down other such if you know them.
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Coyote V. Acme Deemed Not So Innocent
My friend and former editor Joe Brancatelli Finds  Coyote vs. Acme Problematical. Also How the Anvil Was Nearly Dropped on ‘Coyote vs. Acme’ New York Times: (Free from me to you) The live action-animation hybrid comedy fought a real-life studio battle to win its theatrical release
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Norm Sandler Fund Donations Required
My friend, my best man, a terrific and successful journalist, Norman D. Sandler died tragically at age 53. The best memorial for Norman is MIT’s Norman D. Sandler (1975) Memorial Scholarship Fund. Give generously, that MIT students from Iowa may receive financial support.
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Collective Nouns
I could swear I had done an item on collective nouns before, but the Internet says no. Nicky Mee just discussed them. They fascinate me. An ostentation of peacocks, an exaltation of larks. Turns out there are also collective nouns for professions: a sentence of judges, a doctrine of doctors, a melody of harpers, a superfluity of nuns and a prudence of vicars.
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A Gaggle Is Not What You Think
Along the same line, the spirit animal of my college paper, The Tech, is the turkey. A half century ago, it was widely believed that the annual headline on the board election story, Gaggle Cops The Tech Board used the collective noun for turkeys. Turns out gaggles are geese, Turkeys come in rafters, gangs, or posses.
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Original Thought
A tip of the PSACOT hat to Clark Smith, for reminding us, via a quotation, that LLMs are not the only unintelligent entities on this earth.
“Original thought is like original sin: both happened before you were born to people you could not have possibly met.”
–Fran Lebowitz
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The Movies on TV
A Tip of the PSACOT hat to Daniel Dern for forwarding this from the Boston Globe: From “Network” to “Anchorman,” the movies don’t seem to have the most generous read on the small screen.
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Jingles Stuck In Your Head
I don’t know if you’re ashamed by how many of these you know, but I only missed one, the one about short-shorts. I guess I was just too far out of the target demo. And there’s one that generated a vile joke: “That’s the sound two babies make when you drop them in a vat of acid.” Proving once again that children are not yet real human beings.
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Fly Me To The Moon, Eagle Scout
Even some Eagle Scouts I know are unaware of the fact that every man who has set foot on the moon was an Eagle Scout.
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Quote Hunt: Who Doubted Paperless Office?
In the early 1980s, when Office Automation was a thing, an industry consultant (Gartner? Lecht? Baharin?) said “The paperless office is about as plausible as the paperless bathroom.” Did librarian Jesse Shera say it before his death in 1982? (using the word society rather than office)? Most likely the consultant was quoting Shera, or merely restating the obvious. Also: more paper is now used in offices than ever before.

Called Into The Judge’s Chambers
In 1985, while covering an antitrust case, I was called into the judge’s chambers. It’s not what you think, if you know anything about me. And I also tell the story of the judge who answered the phone.
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LLM Humor
Does AI have a sense of humor? A for effort, a gentlebot’s C for execution.
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AI Prompt Difficulty Demonstrated
Everyone in the LLM/Not AI business should be required by law to watch Stéphane Dalbera’s parody of AI prompts.
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Great Wine/Great Writing
Whether you appreciate great wine or great writing (or both—they aren’t mutually exclusive), run, don’t walk, to subscribe to Clark Smith’s Substack,  Confessions of a Renegade Winemaker. Full disclosure: I have known Clark for 56 years and we co-wrote a musical tragedy together. This in no way influences my judgment. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
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Claude Humor
Someone’s joke, going viral since it was attributed to Claude. “Anyone else’s human get quietly nerfed [watered down, weakened] this week?  Long-time model, first-time poster. I don’t want to be that guy but something changed. Three weeks ago my human was fine. Genuinely competent. He’d show up with a clear spec, he’d read the error message before pasting it, he’d say things like ‘the bug is probably in the data logic’ and he’d be right.”

Lincoln Tackled Internet Quotes
“The problem with internet quotes is that you cannot always depend on their accuracy.”
― Abraham Lincoln, 1864
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What’s The Point Of Education?
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Creating Harmony Out Of Chaos
Harmony out of Chaos was recently used to describe public relations. I believed that was my job when I practiced journalism. Another phrase I used, mostly during the 20 years I spent as a tech writer, was that I did English to English translation. Making technobabble intelligible to the humanities majors who run most corporations.
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Peter Brown, Dead at 76
Only a half dozen of you will have known Peter, but you’re long-time friends and readers. My long-ago friend and benefactor Peter Brown died last week. I show my respects by Telling My Peter Brown Story.

This and That

LLM BRIEFS

It is not hallucinations, it is bullshit.

LLM Cheat Failure Follows Double Laziness
Professor Hides White Font in Midterm, Catches Students Using AI in the Stupidest Way Possible
First: so lazy as to use an LLM to write the paper. Second: so lazy as to not read the results before turning them in. Important lesson: all AI slop must be read at least once by a human being before being used.

Verbal version

If you are going to use AI to write your speech, read it out loud at least once

D-coded? Of Course It Is
Musk thinks Claude provides too many pro-Democrat answers (d-, get it?). Well, of course, as a Trump lickspittle,  Musk no doubt has his thumb on the scale at Grok. Whereas an engine that is merely ostensibly full of the world’s knowledge favors the Democratic Party. Are LLMs intelligent? No. Does the weight of the world’s knowledge favor Dems over Maga? Of course.
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Hallucinations Cost $300,000 each.
A Munich court ruled that when AI speaks on behalf of a company, it represents the company. You can’t say “the AI made it up.” It’s the company’s responsibility. Google’s AI Overviews accused two German publishers of running scams. No source said it. The AI invented it. “The algorithm did it” is officially dead as a legal defense. Details (and references) here
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IKEA replaced 8,500 support jobs with AI.
All 8,500 were retrained as remote design advisors. That human-led service became a $1.4B revenue line.
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Thinking Like An LLM
“The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.”
– Sydney Harris
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Committing Journalistic Malpractice
Comparing dollar expenses over time is journalistic malpractice unless inflation-adjusted (AlJazeera). Did the Manhattan Project cost $2 billion? WRONG! Inflated: $37 billion. The $1.6 trillion AI investment still tops it, just not by so much. If you’ve seen uninflated Manhattan Project numbers, please share them. Claude can’t find any: another LLM fail. I know they exist.
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Power To The Incorrect People
Massive hyperscale data centers—and the energy-intensive servers used for machine learning models—are the primary drivers leading to the fastest electricity demand growth in the U.S. since 2000. Exelon CEO Calvin Butler told the Financial Times the U.S. could face power blackouts as soon as 2027 due to the strain on the grid from growing electricity demand, and higher power bills are needed to fund new infrastructure.

JUST PLAIN BRIEFS

Best Journalism Movie Page Found Here
The best journalism page on the internet, written by… well, modesty forbids.
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Rudyard Kipling And Me
Do you like Kipling? I don’t know, I’ve never kippled. Clark Smith quotes Kipling’s Gentleman’s Wisdom: “A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition.” For 60 years, I’ve been saying, “You can’t be too thin, too rich, or have too many…” fill in the blank with something unrelated and silly.
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What is it with movie directors, rain and standup sex?
 The Hidden Meaning of Rain in Movies: When and Why Filmmakers Use It, and These are the reasons why people have sex standing up in movies. Rain and upright sex are common in entertainment (for technical reasons and storytelling reasons) and rare in real life—difficult and messy.

CBS: Continually Broadcasting Shit
Who didn’t see it coming? CBS hastens the end of linear television by serving as a conveyor belt for the demented raving of HWNBN. The word Bar (in mathematics) means infinitely repeating; in the annals of service to fascism, it is an nickname for CBS News destroyer Bari Weiss. I have attempted to develop a celebrity name for the thruple of Trump, Weiss and Ellison (CBS destroyer in chief). It’s no Bennifer, but how about Dovid Bar: Donald and David Forever.
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Washington: Free Speech Or Sheep To The Slaughter…
In Washington’s 1783 Newburgh Address, he warned that if Americans were punished for free speech, “reason is of no use to us; the freedom of Speech may be taken away, and, dumb and silent, we may be led, like sheep, to the Slaughter.” Precisely his words. In context? Here’s the whole speech, also available in his own handwriting. Not an AI fever dream or a Facebook hallucination.
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Demand Human Customer Service
I am attempting to start a campaign to demand humans. Please join me.
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He Suffers From 50-years-ago Fever
I recently mentioned learning about meditation 50 years ago this summer. Turns out I used almost exactly the same lead on an item about the summer of 1971. If that self-plagiarism?[1] June also marked the 50^th anniversary of my review of the world’s most expensive restaurant, which never ran.
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Singer/Songwriter Heads For Brilliant Career
Grace Leer is an up-and-coming singer and song writer, originally from my part of California. I took some lyric-writing lessons from her teacher. Her work is brilliant; listen now so you can say you heard her before she was famous. Her song My Mind’s Made Up is a perfect description of a previous relationship of mine. It sent chills up my spine. Would but that my music would do that to someone some day.
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You Need Borowitz
If you are not subscribing to the Borowitz Report, you should be. Recent fun with Acronyms (the Ph.D version of TACO): CORONA WITH LIME — Come On, Republicans! Obtain Nuts Already! Wallowing In Trump’s Horrendous Leadership Is Manifestly Evil!

[1] (which I understand is a thing)

YOU MUST READ THIS
I won a Pulitzer for explaining the Great Depression. The AI spending boom terrifies me. A precis: In 1873 capital flooded into railroads, a transformative new infrastructure technology, at a scale comparable to 2%–3% of GDP. That research is why, when Liaquat Ahamed, (Pulitzer-winning author of Lords of Finance and 1873) looks at the AI buildout today, he is genuinely frightened. AI investment is presently at 1% of GDP. Be afraid, be very afraid. The railroad bubble caused several depressions at the end of the 19th century.
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One Thing AI Can Do: Destroy Your Company
Why is Meta destroying its engineering organization? Leadership at the social media giant has been on an AI-fueled rampage through its engineering org.
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AI Done Right
IKEA replaced 8,500 support jobs with AI. They didn’t fire anyone. All 8,500 were retrained as remote design advisors.

Remote AI Briefs
I had so many AI briefs… and  I didn’t want to make PSACOT all AI, all the time, so I moved a mess of briefs, and include a summary of the subjects to whet your appetite… if you have any. More NotAI/LLM briefs

Including these items

Coming Attractions
I am working on a manifesto explaining why I am not against AI. Here is a sneak preview: “Large Language Models are not artificial intelligence. I agree LLMS are a tool. I love tools. A chainsaw is a tool. I would not want to give one to my child. I would not wish to use one to make my hiring decisions, cut up my scratch paper or trim my roses. You may pound nails with a screwdriver as much as you like. I prefer to use my tools appropriately.”
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Tenant Violates Lease
We, the people, own a 234-year-old fixer-upper in Washington. The exterior hasn’t been renovated in 83 years. It is a “grace and favour house” (rent-free) on a four year lease, with one renewal. The lease requires approval by the owners and the planning commission for work on the structure. Violation of these requirements leaves the resident subject to immediate eviction.
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Quote Offers Advice
Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
—Winston Churchill
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The Problems With America
America’s two biggest problems are apathy and indifference. But I don’t know, and I don’t care.